Time For a Double Life?
A friend of mine from class — one of the SCOTUS crew that camped out to NOT see Synder v. Phelps — had her birthday yesterday. To celebrate, she, a non-law friend, and I (our other classmates flaked out/probably have social anxiety disorder) went to HR-57, a hole-in-the-wall jazz club in the U Street area named for a House bill that made jazz a national treasure. And for once, the Yelpies and I agreed — the place was awesome. Ambiance is great, cover was $8, and the music was fantastic.
The thing I didn’t realize until after talking to the sax player on stage during break (name is Elijah Jamal, check out his web site here, he’s a Howard University undergrad and he can play) was that Wednesday night is jam session night.
So now an actual confession from the law student: I used to be a jazz musician. I say “used to” because after working my butt off as a teenager to get into one of the country’s top conservatory-level jazz programs, I haven’t touched my sax more than four times in the past four years. Long story short, I lasted a semester in the program before I dropped out, partially because I hated the program, partially because I have a damaged nerve in one of my hands, and partially because I didn’t think it’d be realistic to pursue my dream. A friend of mine who left the program at the same time I did described it as “being like a really bad breakup.” That was a pretty accurate description.
In the time since I feel like I’ve done pretty well for myself (I mean, GW is T-2o, and rankings are how we assess our worth as human beings amirite?!?!). But sometimes I’d get this feeling that something was lacking. And last night, sitting there in that club, I figured out what it was. And I got a crazy idea.
I’m gonna ship my sax up from home and start playing again. And I might do a jam session every week or two.
I don’t know how realistic the prospect of being a law student by day and amateur musician by night (even just one night a week) would be, given the enormous workload we have as 1Ls. But while I was somewhat drunk feeling good last night, I thought, “Jazz makes me invincible!!!!” well, this will give me incentive to actually get my work done instead of procrastinating on Facebook. And if people with kids can succeed in law school, there’s no reason I can’t take a night every week to do what I actually love.
Anyways, just thought I’d put the readership on notice. We’ll see how this plays out.
Meantime I’m gonna use my fall break to get ahead on some things. Hopefully it’ll let me have some time next week to branch out and actually live a little. (…but probably not).
Confessions of an Aztec Law Student 